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Lawyers decry courts' limit on info

BOSTON -- Lowell-area attorneys are frustrated that the Massachusetts Trial Court has restricted online access to public information on criminal cases in the wake of a "data harvesting" incident.

As of July 1, defense attorneys and prosecutors have had their online access to basic court information in criminal cases -- the defendant's name, charges, attorneys, docket entries and next court dates -- restricted so they can only access their cases.

Before the new restrictions, attorneys were given broader online access, allowing to find any defendant by name.

"It makes it much more difficult for scheduling and planning purposes for all of us private and (public defenders)," Greater Lowell Board Association President Robert Normandin said.

Mass Trial Court spokeswoman Erika Gully-Santiago said routine checks showed "data harvesting," which is an automated process in which a "malicious bot" is used to extract large amounts of data from a website and use it for other purposes.

Gully-Santiago declined to say what group is responsible for the harvesting.

No personal information, such as Social Security numbers or financial information, is listed on MassCourts, so none of the information that was accessed was sensitive, Gully-Santiago said.

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But local lawyers complain that the new restriction makes it tougher to keep tabs on pending cases in district court or to verify the dispositions of past cases.

As a supervising attorney, Normandin said online access to all criminal cases is critical to schedule defense attorneys to cover area courthouses. The online access provided only basic public information and did not violate privacy rules, he said.

"This is public information," Normandin said. "In this day and age, the public should have access to this information online."

Defense attorney Christopher Spring agrees.

"The Constitution guarantees that courtrooms are open to the public," he said. "These new restrictions violate the spirit of this constitutional principle."

The information that was previously available online was always considered public information -- it was just available online.

"The new restrictions simply make it more difficult to obtain, with no valid justification," Spring said.

That increases the burden on court clerks because reporters and interested members of the public will have to travel to a clerk's office to obtain public information in person rather than simply look it up on the internet, Spring said.

Last week, a criminal case in Lowell District Court was in limbo for several hours after prosecutors found themselves in a quandary when they wanted to revoke the suspect's bail in a superior-court case after the suspect was arrested again and arraigned in district court.

Prosecutors told the judge they were initially unable to obtain the superior-court "docket," which would show that the suspect was given a "bail warning" or told that he could be sent to jail if he violated conditions of release.

District-court prosecutors had to track down the superior-court prosecutor handling the case to have him access the court docket and fax it to the judge.

What once required simply typing a docket number into a computer took several hours.

Media access online via the attorney portal had the plug pulled two years ago when the Trial Court switched to the $75 million MassCourts, which is intended to link more than 100 courthouses in the state. That was a move from ForeCourt, which had been used since 1996.

But at a time when government is moving toward more online public access, people living in Middlesex County have access to MassCourt via public terminals in Middlesex Superior Court in Woburn, despite having courthouses in Lowell, Ayer and Concord.

Forcing people to travel to Woburn to access public terminals is difficult at best and not in the spirit of making the courts more accessible, defense attorney Roland Milliard said.

The restrictions are temporary, Gully-Santiago said. The Supreme Judicial Court is mulling new rules on how the public and attorneys are given online access to criminal records, but there is no deadline for when the new rules will be approved.

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